


and I was set alight

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, I Don't Even Know, I don't know where this is going entirely, Murder, Patricide, Rule 63, Tiny Des picking up swear words from Palpateen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 05:42:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18243515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: Palpatine completely accidentally travels backward in time, and unleashes both pent up aspirations of killing abusive fathers, and an alternate history upon the galaxy





	and I was set alight

**Author's Note:**

> title from Florence + the Machine's "Only If For A Night"
> 
> See end note for who dies so far (in case anyone actually cares about being spoiled??)

Wishing upon stars didn't work, and Palpatine, who had rejected her first name, wasn't expecting it to, and yet, on this, the evening of her seventeenth birthday, she wished she could wake up absolutely anywhere but here. 

A dream, she mentally commented, when her eyes opened in a shabby bunkroom. From a movie or a book she couldn't consciously recall within it. _Only a dream._

"...who are you?" whispered the skinny child, perhaps about seven years of age.

"Shuddup, Bane!" thundered a voice that recollected Cosinga at his worst temper. Suddenly fumes of strong and harsh alcohol wafted into Palpatine's face where she lay on the floor. It was a huge man who had clearly had a hard life, and quite recently spilled something probably illicitly distilled all over his pants.

"Hide," the child instructed Palpatine bravely.

But this was a dream, so the Naboo youth merely sat up.

"I didn't tell ya you could bring home vagabonds," the monster shouted and backhanded the child, leaving the small chapped nose dripping blood.

" _I_ am not a vagabond," Palpatine said, in her best emulation of Cosinga's entitled and self-righteous disagreement, the best way she knew to sound plausibly intimidating without stooping to this drunkard's level. Unfortunately it probably sounded more prim than anything else, coming from her person.

"Don't matter," he slurred, and seized his presumed offspring's shoulder, pressing the kid to the wall, and shaking like he might a rag doll. 

Something seemed to snap within Palpatine at this, something that had been building like a thunderhead, something she could never allow an outlet in wakefulness. Her whole family had never been especially prone to sympathy, but within this dream, a single concept suddenly consumed her: _The abuser must_ die.

Now he was grasping for a thin board that lay on the small table. "Don't. You. Fucking. Dare." Palpatine thundered, in a voice that was now actually dangerous. Lightning seemed to crackle at her fingers (was it?); the flesh of this vile man was suddenly all in her consciousness, as if veins and muscles were piano strings to be struck or the walls and trees of a model town for which a small human's marauding could be a hurricane. 

His forearm with which he gripped the kid seized violently, and the child wrenched away. Sparks flew through the air, with a thready clap at the discharge, and the staccato beat of the man's heart, now dominating Palpatine's hearing in a way that should not have been possible for something a meter and more away, slowed to an erratic beat of experimental music _thump-------thump-thump-----thump-------------thump---thu-_.

"He--" but the kid didn't seem to know what to say.

Without squeemishness, Palpatine bent her ear to the still chest. Even if she had known how, she had no intention of attempting CPR. There was no heartbeat. He seemed to have died of an electrical shock induced cardiac arrest. Pity there wasn't an obvious culprit of a device for him to have been messing with.

"Fucking hell," swore the child quietly (Palpatine did not feel moved to hypocritically correct this) and in a slightly louder voice explained "I'm Deselle. Are you--" but again, Deselle seemed lost for words.

"Palpatine," she supplied, and wondered what the dream would throw at her next.

"Is he dead?" Deselle asked in a whisper. Rather realistic kid her subconscious was conjuring.

"Yes."

And then the old timey radio came on, some sort of advertisement.

"It's an alarm. No one knows how to reset it to be useful. I did it accidentally when I was three." Deselle reported. "Oh, and everyone calls me Des."

"The Republic urges suppliers to ramp up cortosis production in preparation for the next stage of the war," the announcer on the radio said, before Des switched it off. 

The...war? What war? Why would her mind dream up a war? 

Palpatine pinched her left forearm, but the minor pain served neither to wake her nor to suddenly impress upon her mind that she had, somehow, in fact woken up somewhere (and perhaps somewhen?!) else, and then become a...murderer.

"Will you take me with you?" Des asked, but shied away from actually touching her.

"I--I don't know how I even ended up here," she said, now shaky with shock.

"I don't, either. But I wished someone would come. I wished my mom would come back."

"I'm certainly not your mother. But... I suppose I will try to find you somewhere to go." This was being far more compassionate than could ever win Cosinga's approval, and for a dozen reasons, even if she could get back, she couldn't dare duplicate the feat with her accursed father.

They curled up on the lower bed, perhaps from instinct, although Des didn't seem to think anyone would disturb them until at least the next morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Major Character death is Hurst, Bane's abusive father.


End file.
